Innovation in Involving Service Users and Students in Social Work Education and Research

This symposium will offer four updated presentations which together provide a rich and in-depth critical and innovative framework demonstrating and analyzing the involvement of service users and students in S.W. education and related research projects. Creating the first ever Italian expert by experience group that contributes to the training of S.W. students is focused upon in Allegri's presentation. Ramon focuses on engaging service users as co-researchers in a comparative project on evaluating students’ views of the contribution of service users in Israel and the UK. Moshe Grodofsky's project illustrates the issues entailed in engaging students alongside service users in tackling debt difficulties in an Israeli community facing diverse challenges. Engaging foreign students alongside practitioners and service users living in total institutions is a challenge outlined in an innovative project led by Rafaelic. We will also focus in methodological aspects to a more emancipatory approach.